Primarily because incoming CEO Brian Cornell is an outsider — the first in its history — which the Minneapolis company desperately needs to guide it out a valley of suffering.

Target’s soon-to-be-gone interim CEO John Mulligan basically admitted as much to Bloomberg News in May. Like the credit card hacking that destroyed customer confidence, and buying. Then there’s the widely-described “botch” of its expansion in Canada that has cost the company $1.6 billion, a debt downgrade from S&P, steadily , not to mention five consecutive quarters of declining sales and the headwinds big box retailers face from other channels.

So what does Cornell, 55, bring to the party? Consumer product marketing experience gained from his time as CEO of PepsiCo American Foods, before that of Sam’s Club (owned by Walmart International) and Michaels Stores, and chief marketing officer at Safeway. And, as said, he’s an outsider.

“You have to have someone from the outside who knows how to communicate with customers, especially how to restore the customer confidence they’ve lost. The real issue is less product, and more about the security breach, which they haven’t recovered from,” said Helen Bulwik, partner at Newport Board Group Board, a retail and management consulting firm in

For Bulwik, a top priority is fixing Target’s internal IT system, “not only because of the security breach, but to get its online business (which accounts for about 2% of its sales) 0n track. They’ve got to put money into technology.”

Plenty to do for the incoming CEO, who is getting $19.3 billion in equity grants from Target for walking away from his Pepsi gig.